Getting Innovative With Home Brewing Ingredients

Craft brewers are flinging open the pantry doors and using a wide variety of ingredients to create interesting, great-tasting beers that were practically inconceivable just a few years ago.

For 15 years Rob Caputo was just another obsessed home brewer. Luckily for craft beer aficionados throughout the Midwest, Caputo was able to parlay his passion into a career, founding Flat12 Bierworks in Indianapolis. Caputo searches online for articles on food pairings and cookbooks (cake and pie recipes are favorites), trying to come up with inspiration for his latest craft beers. He's also a familiar face at the various ethnic grocery stores around town, scanning the shelves for savory new spices and sugars.

Over the years Caputo has learned that a unique mix of ingredients can mean the difference between an unremarkable and an unforgettable beer. So what's his secret?

Have a Good Base Beer

One of the biggest mistakes most beginner home brewers make is trying to get creative before they've mastered their base beers.

"Some people do a couple of batches and think they've got it perfected," Caputo says. "When they start adding ingredients, the lack of a good base becomes quickly apparent. I hate seeing people turned off the hobby because of a bad batch or two."

Caputo suggests beginners looking to create a more distinctive beer use a darker base. "A darker beer is much more forgiving," Caputo says. "A light lager or a blonde just doesn't have enough going on to cover up your mistakes."

If you're simply looking to experiment, you needn't bother using your own base recipe. Caputo says he often uses store-bought beer similar in taste to what he plans to make. It's often as simple as buying a 6-pack of porter, then adding different spices to taste.

Start Small and Blend

When creating a taco-inspired craft beer, Caputo put each of the four main ingredients—chipotle, cumin, cilantro, and lemon zest—in separate vats of Flat12's amber ale, then blended the four in different amounts until it had the taste he was looking for. That gave him much more control over the process and the final product than he would have had if he had started adding the four ingredients to the same batch.

Always err on the side of adding too little of a particular ingredient, Caputo says. You can always add more spice, but you can't take it out.

Keep an Open Mind

Of Flat12's annual 12 beers of Christmas, Caputo estimates most fall into the good or great category, one or two are merely drinkable, and one slides into the "never again" bin. Oddly enough, some of those craft beers Caputo deems "undrinkable" have the most vocal supporters. "I tell them we'll never do it again, for whatever reason, but they still keep asking," Caputo says. "Even if you don't like it, someone else might."

Even if you hate a beer, don't give up after one sip. Your mind can change drastically after just two or three swallows, as your palate adjusts to the different tastes.

Finally, Go Crazy

Home brewing is a hobby, so have fun. Earlier this year Caputo began working on a special small-batch beer for a customer's birthday. Using the customer's Twitter handle, @asiansplenda, as inspiration, he worked backward to create an ingredient list. The addition of the Splenda and Asian pear initially made the blonde beer a little too sweet, but Caputo eased back on the sugar substitute and used ginger, a popular ingredient in nearly every Asian kitchen, to add a bit of snap at the end.

Don't be afraid to pair ingredients that might sound a bit crazy on the surface. Cucumber probably doesn't immediately pop in your head as an ideal craft-beer ingredient, for example. But when added to an easy-drinking, K√∂lsch-style German ale, Caputo found that the green gives a refreshing finish.

When Flat12 added blood oranges to its popular Half Cycle India Pale Ale, giving a tangy sharpness to the newly christened Bleeding Heart IPA, Caputo probably could have rested on his laurels. But for Cinco de Mayo, he went one step further, adding the extra kick of cayenne pepper. Combined, the tart beer finishes with a gentle burn in the back of your throat. Flat12 drinkers already have May 5 circled on their calendar for next year.

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